Climate: A marked rainy season runs from December to March though showers are also frequent out of the wet season. May through August are recommended for visiting, despite temperatures above 32 ºC.

Access and Services: A rental boat will take travelers up the Tambopata river from Puerto Maldonado which can also be reached by regular commercial air service. Rustic accommodation is available at some local inns providing basic services for travelers.

Length of Stay: Four or five days are enough to tour this easy-to-reach area.

A recently created park in the jungle territories of the Puno and Madre de Dios departments, the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park (names given by the Ese'eja ethnic group to the Tambopata and Ene rivers, respectively) serves to protect what are probably the last inhabited tropical forests of the world.

Its 1,091,416 hectares of rain forests adjoining the Madidi National Park of Bolivia have been expanded with a small area of palm tree savanna (previously protected as part of the Pampas del Heath Sanctuary) to form one of the most biodiverse corners of the planet.

Charles Munn, member of the Zoological Society of New York and ranked by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential personalities of the coming century, claims that the forests in this park shelter more plant and animal species that elsewhere in the world: over 20,000 plant species, a thousand bird species and hundreds of mammals, reptiles and fish.

These are the ancestral lands of the Ese'eja, a tribe on the verge of extinction that was decimated during the "rubber boom" at the turn of the century.